Water Development: Let's Stop Reinventing the Wheel and Talk to Each Other

An Every Drop Matters project in Sri Lanka helped the
community to build toilets, dig wells and receive environmental and hygiene
education.

(Photo Credit: )

In response to World Water Week in Stockholm last month, our partner WWF is hosting a water series on their blog On Balance
to continue the conversation. Several different partners will be
sharing their perspectives, and we're helping spread those stories here
on Unbottled. Check back each day this week to get a snapshot of their
posts and to jump into the conversation in the comments.

Last month’s World Water Week in Stockholm focused on
how collaboration can help organisations develop solutions to the world’s water
challenges. With the United Nations declaring 2013 the International Year of
Water Cooperation, all eyes were on how partnerships can best work in practice.

From my point of view, it is partnerships involving
the private sector that are moving things forward in the water development
sector. The reason for this? It’s simply that, when working with the business
world, there is no time to rest on one’s laurels. Projects must be delivered quickly
and efficiently – because if a budget is not spent within a given time frame,
with tangible results, there will be no more funds from the business partner.

It is this pay-cycle structure, and the way of
thinking that prevails within the private sector, that has sparked a new era of
productivity in water development projects. Business partners like The Coca-Cola
Company act as a firelighter when it comes to creating more dynamic mechanisms within
development agencies like the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and World
Wildlife Fund.

So, working with the business sector can help
development agencies move forward in terms of speed and efficiency. But
collaboration within the development sector is important too. All too often,
water-related activities duplicate each other with very similar projects
existing in parallel. In the dry ‘badia’
areas of Jordan, for example, I have seen maybe 10 or 15 water harvesting
projects funded by different donors, which are doing the same type of thing at
any one time.

Bogachan discusses in deeper length why we clearly need to talk to each other more and stop reinventing the wheel on WWF's On Balance.

Every Drop Mattershas
funded over 60 innovative projects in 22 countries, from Croatia to Sri Lanka
and from Belarus to Bangladesh. More than 800,000 people have directly
benefited from the project, with over 300,000 of them now enjoying access to
safe water and sanitation.